The special military operation turns into a counterterrorism one
МОСКВА, 03 марта 2022, Институт РУССТРАТ.
In just a week of fighting, Russian Z-units managed to liberate a number of large settlements in Ukraine, operatively surround other ones, destroy the Ukrainian Armed Forces as an integral structure and disable hundreds of military facilities. According to current information on the morning of March 2, the list of surrounded cities was replenished with Mariupol — one of the centres of the Ukrainian nationalist grouping in Donbass.
Berdyansk and Melitopol in the Zaporozhye region and Kherson came under the control of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, Nikolaev, if not yet surrounded, is close to this state. The Ukrainian capital Kiev looks like «de facto surrounded» — the local mayor Vitaly Klitschko directly stated this, and the command of the Russian forces provided a «corridor» for those who desire it to leave the settlement.
There are already facts of cooperation between local administrations and the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation — these are Kherson, Melitopol, Kupyansk in the Kharkov region. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is guarded by the Russian military together with the Ukrainian security forces, who, despite a decade of nationalist propaganda, have remained professionals.
Persistent fighting continues in Kharkov and the Sumy region, but the main fact is already being felt: a special military operation in Ukraine, whose tasks were designated as the demilitarisation and denazification of this territory, in a military sense is already moving into the category of a counter-terrorism one.
The main enemies in it are not the remnants of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, but relatively small nationalist groups. In the future, there will be a lot of work for the military police and the National Guard of the Russian Federation, who, in cooperation with loyal local vigilantes, will have to restore order in controlled settlements. This will be the second main task of the ongoing special operation.
25,000 assault rifles, not counting RPGs
The idea of the Kiev leadership to announce the free distribution of weapons to everyone was absolutely insane in military terms. More precisely, initially it was about arming those ready to join the so-called territorial self-defence, but then the scope expanded to persons with a passport. As a result, weapons in Kiev began to be distributed completely uncontrollably from trucks. In addition to automatic weapons, it was possible to get an RPG, sometimes a MANPADS.
If the combat value of such a «Volkssturm» — this word is often used by paramilitary groups as a self-designation – is small, then in terms of rampant criminality, the situation has deteriorated significantly. Kiev residents actively complain on social networks about gangs of armed looters who use the received weapons not for the purpose of fighting against the «Russian occupiers».
A number of armed robberies of both large stores, including with food, and robbery on highways, the victims of which are truckers, were recorded.
Robberies often have a national motivation. According to a recent report of the Belarusian Investigatory Committee, five trucks loaded with goods were taken away from Belarusian truckers in Ukraine, the seized property is estimated at €200,000.
Separately, it is worth mentioning the most flourishing espionage in Kiev, which often hides other motives. As numerous sources confirm, the «insufficiently Ukrainian» pronunciation of a word or any other «suspicious» feature of a person is considered a sufficient reason for opening fire.
The depth and effectiveness of the ideological pumping, to which the population of Ukraine has been intensively subjected over the past 8 years, should not be underestimated.
Denazification as a necessity
The pumping of Ukraine with weapons from the West continues. Even Germany, which has so far refrained from such destructive manifestations, has declared its readiness to send significant amounts of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine.
However, there are big doubts that there will be those capable of receiving these weapons. The plans of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation for the operation have not been publicly published, but based on the nature of the advance of the Z-units and the armies of the DPR and LPR, it is safe to talk about the full control of all major cities of Ukraine no later than March 8-9.
Already now the Russian Aerospace Forces fully control the skies over Ukraine – according to current data on the morning of March 2, 47 UAF aircraft on the ground and 11 aircraft in the air were destroyed during the operation.
The remaining military facilities are methodically destroyed by air strikes or tactical missiles. At the same time, the civilian population is fundamentally and demonstratively protected — even in cases where this is associated with additional risks.
Most of the losses suffered by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation – they, of course, exist, albeit minimal with such a scale of the operation and the nature of the fighting — are associated with ambushes on the rear of the columns.
It must be remembered that a significant number of residents of the territories through which the Z-units are advancing can indeed be attributed to ideological Nazis of the Ukrainian kind. Many have experience of fighting during the punitive operation against Donbass, and the weapons distributed in addition to the available ones give enough tools to attack soldiers of the armies of Russia, the DPR and the LPR.
In recent days, even from openly propagandistic Ukrainian resources, there are practically no victorious reports about the actions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. This is understandable, since units of the UAF prefer to surrender because of the senselessness and lack of reasons for resistance.
The need for anti-terror methods is increasingly coming to the fore – the «Bandera underground» is no longer an attribute of purely Western Ukraine. A humane attitude towards the population does not at all cancel the specifics of combat security laid down by the charter, vigilance of patrols and consideration of objective risks of sudden attacks on individual servicemen or combat vehicles.
It will be possible to «relax» only when denazification really will take place in Ukraine. Unlike the purely military phase of “Operation Z”, it will take additional time.
(@russtrat)
